Luis Joaquin Rodriguez Ricardo

Luis was born in 1966 and grew up in the village of Mella, about an hour outside of Cuba’s second city, Santiago de Cuba. His father, whose paintings also form part of this exhibit, started El Grupo Bayate, a collective of self-taught artists living in Mella, in 1994. Many of the artists have become well-known in the world of folk art, especially Luis, who continues to sign his paintings “El Estudiante” in deference to his father, whom he considers his teacher, “El Maestro.” Today, Luis Jr. is the only member of the collective who lives outside of Mella. When he married Luisa Maria Ramirez, an art critic and El Grupo Bayate’s chronicler and promoter, he moved into her family home in Santiago, where they live with Luisa’s parents, Mercedes and Ignacio, and their four-year-old son, Luisito.Luis has exhibited widely, and in 1997 he and Luisa came to the United States for two shows of El Grupo Bayate’s work, one at the Southside Gallery in Oxford, Mississippi, the other at an exhibit sponsored by the Center for Cuban Studies at the Metropolitan Arts Center. Luis’ work was featured in a June 2002 article by Annette Grant in The New York Times (“Ebullient Cubans Make a Lot Out of a Little”) in which she noted, “the Grupo paints in a naive, narrative style and takes rural life as its subject. The work of the Rodriguezes is riotously colorful and stacked like a rush-hour train.”